The Week in Movies

22nd – 28th Mar 2010

Piranha / Piranha II: Flying Killers (18)
DIR: Joe Dante / James Cameron

This long dormant franchise is soon due to give birth to a new - 3D - instalment directed by Alexandre Aja, so I thought it would be a good time to check out the first two films.

Joe Dante’s Piranha, with a screenplay by John Sayles, isn’t an especially upmarket or intelligent film. In fact it is silly and exploitative, with some ropey effects and pretty bad acting, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Dante has always been a witty filmmaker and Piranha is a very funny film, with plenty of knowing nods to other movies (of course the whole thing is a Jaws rip off). Because Dante, Sayles and the cast keep their tongues shoved firmly in their cheeks this is a real treat, if you’re in the right mood.

Piranha II is most notable, no, scratch that, ONLY notable, for being the directorial debut of one Mr J. Cameron, who has since made a few movies you might have heard of. Unfortunately, Flying Killers isn’t one of those cheap debuts that exceeds expectations, and reveals a talent in waiting. It’s just shit. The screenplay and direction lack the knowing tone that made the first film such fun and the effects (by Lucio Fulci’s frequent collaborator Gianetto Di Rossi) are, sadly, dreadful. Oh, and the acting is so bad it’s actually rather funny. Both these films are crap, but only the first is fun, entertaining crap.


Not the Messiah: He’s a Very Naughty Boy (PG)
Screened in cinemas for one day only, Eric Idle’s operatic version of The Life of Brian was, frankly, often just a bit odd. There’s little staging, so the visuals tended just to be the singers standing in place and delivering the songs (though they did some acting as well, and I was surprised at how adept and funny they could be), but the more pressing problem was that the laughs too often stopped dead during the songs. The songs are beautifully crafted, clever parodies of both pop and classical styles, but the lyrics just weren’t funny in themselves, so much of the time it’s a three minute wait for the next joke.

There were a few exceptions to that rule, notably an excellent doo wop parody and the very rude Amourdeus. Most of the rest of the jokes were drawn verbatim from the film, and delivered with obvious enjoyment, but the only time I had a real belly laugh during the whole 90 minutes was the first time that Terry Gilliam appeared. A fun curio, but less engaging than it should have been.


Leonera (15)
[Lion’s Den]
DIR: Pablo Trapero

Argentinian actress Martina Gusman is outstanding in this otherwise rather ordinary prison drama. Gusman plays Julia, a young woman imprisoned for the murder of her boyfriend. We never know the story behind the crime, though the film seems to infer that she’s not, or at least not entirely, guilty. When she arrives in prison Julia is pregnant, and she’s allowed to keep her son, Tomas, with her until he is four, and live on a wing with other mothers and their young children.

This is a part of the problem, because I didn’t really buy into Trapero’s depiction of prison, which, for the most part, he seems to suggest is a holiday camp with razorwire. What does play, through Gusman, is Julia’s fierce, almost obsessive, love for her child but outside of that the film plods a little, treading a familiar narrative path (complete with risibly unrealistic ending), and it never completely engaged me.


Air Force One (15)
DIR: Wolfgang Petersen
Harrison Ford as an ass kicking US president, fighting Gary Oldman’s Russian terrorist, on board Air Force One. It’s stupid, overblown and schematically written, but really, what’s not to like? Big, dumb, fun.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (PG)
DIR: Eric Radomski / Bruce W. Timm


This acclaimed spin off of the Batman animated series was a real disappointment on this rewatch, some years after I had last seen it. The voice work is excellent, and the character design bold and appealing, but the animation is pretty unimpressive, and lacking in fluidity. On top of that, the story, despite just a 73 minute running time, is actually rather dull and slow moving. The film wins points for the sequences with Mark Hammill’s hilarious Joker, but otherwise I was disappointed this time round.


The Sure Thing (15)
DIR: Rob Reiner

Why doesn’t everyone love The Sure Thing? I mean, really, it’s Rob Reiner’s second film, made between gold standard classics This is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. It stars John Cusack, just before Say Anything, and it’s that rare thing; a romantic comedy that is not only funny, but manages to grow the relationship between its two main characters (Cusack and the cute Daphne Zuniga) in a believable way. Essentially, The Sure Thing is a raunchier, 80’s set, remake of It Happened One Night with Cusack’s character not a journalist travelling in pursuit of a story but a college student going to California to be set up by his friend with a dream girl (the titular Sure Thing). The film is consistently hilarious, thanks to the excellent chemistry between Cusack and Zuniga and to their energetic performances. There are also some nice supporting turns, notably from Tim Robbins as “Gary Cooper, but not the Gary Cooper that’s dead”.

If you haven’t seen this terrific, sadly underseen, movie I really would highly recommend that you pick it up and give it a chance.

Two Weeks in Movies

8th - 21st Mar 2010

It’s been an odd couple of weeks. I dropped this article last week because, aside from the three films I saw at the cinema, I had only seen another two films in those seven days. This past week I spent a lot of time at cinemas, so much so that several cinema releases will be covered here rather than in full reviews. All, hopefully, will return to normal next week.


Maximum Jail
DIR: Jonathan Stack


Jonathan Stack revisits Angola prison in Louisiana, ten years after making a film about six prisoners serving long, or even life, terms. Two are dead, one of AIDS, the other of a lethal injection. Two have been released; one paroled, one pardoned, and are thriving, using their freedom to preach and attempt to turn young people away from a path that might lead to Angola. Two remain incarcerated. Of these the most intriguing story is that of Vincent Simmonds, serving 100 years for a double rape, which he maintains that he did not commit, despite the fact that saying he had would place him, perhaps, on the road to eventual parole. The scene that shows his parole hearing, and the spectacularly short and dismissive consideration that his case is given, is the film’s most troubling, and most enduring.

Stack paints a rosy picture of Angola under warden Burl Cain; it seems almost more like a hermetically sealed religious retreat than a prison, and you have to wonder how full a picture this is. That said. Jonathan Stack weaves an intriguing and compelling tapestry here; you wish he’d spend a little more time on Simmons, the details of whose arrest are pretty shocking, as he’s easily the most compelling character in the film, but this is an intelligent and engaging film that does much to shatter stereotypical views of prison and prisoners.


The Wrong Man [‘56] (PG)
DIR: Alfred Hitchcock


The title of this Hitchcock could just as easily belong to any number of his other films, and while this one, stacked up against the rest of his work from the 40’s and 50’s, seems like a minor entry in the canon, it remains a cracking thriller. Henry Fonda radiates simple decency as the man misidentified as a bank robber, while Hitch’s then favourite Sylvia Miles is excellent as the wife driven mad by his predicament. Hitchcock is on typically fluent form behind the camera, adopting a slightly grittier, less designed style than usual, and using many of the real locations in which this true story took place. It’s not one of the Master’s masterpieces, but it’s still highly recommended.


Bonnie and Clyde (18)
DIR: Arthur Penn


“They’re young, they’re in love, and they kill people”. Bonnie and Clyde may have the single best tagline ever written, but both that line and the film it promotes fail to tell the full story. Arthur Penn’s movie is a great success on its own terms, even 42 years later the frankness and casualness of the film’s violence is shocking and the fast moving script and capable, perversely likable, performances make for a highly engaging and exciting movie, as mythmaking it’s fantastic.

However, when it comes to telling the story of these famous criminals, the whitewashing is a real shame. Obviously it would be impossible to include all their exploits, but in making Bonnie and Clyde into glamorous outlaw antiheroes the film misses the more dramatic and more interesting truth. All in all, the film does what it sets out to do brilliantly, but I can’t help thinking there’s a much more interesting film to be made by sticking closer to the truth.


Apan (18)
[The Ape]
DIR: Jesper Ganslandt


This minimalist thriller from Sweden seems, once again, to confirm that their film industry is in rude health. Jesper Ganslandt’s film opens with a man in his late 30’s (Olle Sarri) waking, covered in blood, in what seems to be an unfamiliar room, and then, following him over roughly the next 36 hours, proceeds to fill us in on why he woke up that way and his attempts to deal with the situation he finds himself in.

Sarri is brilliant (helped, apparently, by the fact that Ganslandt never let him see a script or speak to the crew, ensuring that he was as alienated and surprised by events as his character), and this doom laden film seems to lead both him and us ever further into a very recognisable hell. The Ape doesn’t deal in explicit violence, but it does boast several moments that hit with the force of a punch to the gut, largely because they feel so very, disturbingly, real. If you appreciated Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer then The Ape, with all its faults (it certainly can feel a little languorous in its first forty minutes, and ends with a moment that will have you screaming ‘is that IT?’) is well worth the brief eighty minutes of your time that it asks for, and it certainly marks Jesper Ganslandt as a talent to watch.


I Love You, Phillip Morris (15)
DIR: Glenn Ficarra / John Requa


The first directorial effort from the writers of Bad Santa isn’t quite so in your face as you might expect, nor is it packed with bad taste humour (though it's subject matter will certainly offend some small-minded folk). In fact, at the heart of this very funny true story (an opening caption assures us “This really happened. It really did.”) is a surprisingly genuine, and actually strangely touching, love story between two men.

The titular Phillip is played by Ewan McGregor, and he meets Carrey’s Steven Russell, whose life has taken him from being a married cop to a flamboyantly gay con man, in prison. While there the two fall in love, and on his release Russell turns to ever more outlandish cons, first to free Phillip and then to keep them both in a lavish lifestyle, however, it all comes undone when Steven is, once again, caught and sent to prison.

Both Carrey and McGregor are better here than they’ve been in a very long time. Carrey is laugh out loud funny as the energetic and imaginative Russell, but also manages to give a convincing dramatic performance, and really makes us believe in his love for Morris. McGregor has a much less showy part, but he plays it beautifully, making Phillip fey and effeminate without just playing a stereotype. There’s also nice work in the supporting cast, especially from Leslie Mann, who has never been better than she is here, as Russell’s estranged, but still caring, wife.

It would be a crime to divulge the twists and turns of the plot, other than to say that if they weren’t true you’d never believe them. This is a smart, funny and also rather heartwarming film, and a rare American mainstream comedy that focuses on gay characters without ever resorting to ridiculing them.


L’affaire Farewell (15)
[Farewell]
DIR: Christian Carion


Christian Carion’s telling of the (at least largely) true story of a Russian spy, handled by the French and codenamed Farewell (played by director Emir Kusturica) plays like a 70’s espionage thriller. Deliberately paced, and played mostly through conversational scenes rather than action, it nevertheless grips from beginning to end.

As the high ranking spy, Kusturica is excellent, giving a slightly melancholy performance as a man hoping that by risking his life he’ll help make a better world for his son, while as his young, inexperienced handler Guillaume Canet (also, incidentally, a director) is decent and harried in appropriately equal measure. These two actors dominate the film, but there are valuable, if small, contributions from the rest of an international cast.

Alexandra Maria Lara has a thin role as Canet’s concerned wife, but she brings life to it, much the same is true of Kusturica’s mistress, played by the brilliant Dina Korzun and Willem Dafoe as Canet’s eventual CIA contact. The supporting player who sometimes threatens to steal the film though is Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Kusturica’s wife. She’s just wonderfully real in every one of the too few moments she’s on screen. The only disappointing performance comes from Fred Ward, as a hammy Ronald Reagan.

What’s especially nice, in this day and age, about L’affaire Farewell is that it proves that you don’t have to tear a page out of the Bourne playbook to make a riveting spy movie.


24 Hour Party People (18)
DIR: Michael Winterbottom


A cast of Britain’s best character actors, led by a brilliant Steve Coogan as Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, bring the Madchester music scene of the 80’s and early 90’s to vivid life in this legend printing film from the prolific Michael Winterbottom. It’s not an especially dep explorattio of either the music or the times, more a brilliantly fun scrapbook of half remembered, half invented incidents that are more interesting than the actual truth. The performances are fantastic (special notice to Andy Serkis, Paddy Considine and Shirley Henderson, as well as Coogan) and Frank Cottrell Boyce’s script is sharp, funny, and a little bitter. Oh, and the music’s great.


Christmas in July / The Great McGinty (U)
DIR: Preston Sturges
I’ve put the two of these together because, as well as their being by the same writer/director I really have just about the exact same things to say about both of them. There’s a lot of good stuff here; a strong premise (Man goes on a spending spree, thinking he’s won $25,000, only to discover later that the prize was given by mistake [Christmas in July]. Corrupt politician is undone by his first honest act [The Great McGinty]), good performances, sharp writing and sure handed direction. That said, both of these early efforts from Preston Sturges (who later made the brilliant The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels) are both rather middle of the road efforts. They’ve got a good amount of chuckles, and neither is ever boring, but neither ever really soars either. Pretty average efforts from a director who made at least a couple of great films.


The Children (15)
DIR: Tom Shankland


Shankland’s entry in the cycle of paedophobic horror that has been coming out of Britain is neither the strongest, nor the weakest of its kind, and it’s certainly head and shoulders above his awful previous film W∆Z. There are some genuinely effective moments in this story about an extended family taking a new years holiday when their children all fall ill, and then begin to attack the adults. Though most of the violence is cleverly cut to play only very briefly on screen, Shankland does still manage to make a lot of it seem very painful (see Eva Birthistle’s leg break. Ouch.)

This is also an impressively transgressive film. Even the nastiest of horror films usually shrinks from violence being meted out to children, not this one, there are a couple of really nasty, and shockingly explicit, moments of violence once the children turn into infected killing machines.

On the downside, the performances aren’t great, with Rachel Shelley’s hammy wailing especially irritating, and there are some serious plot holes (why, for instance, can Birthistle’s character drive at the end of the film, with her shattered leg). There’s also a problem with the ending, which is perhaps supposed to be scary, but the blank look on Hannah Tointon’s face, which may be supposed to frighten us, is so like the blank look she wears during the rest of the film that it’s hard to tell what Shankland is going for with that shot.

The Children is efficient and stylish, and with a better cast Tom Shankland may yet prove to be an interesting filmmaker.


Scream (18)
DIR: Wes Craven


Fourteen years on (wow, I feel old), Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s genre reviving slasher looks, in all honesty, pretty clunky. The analysis of the genre had been done better before (in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare) and has been done better since (in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon) and without the novelty factor that it had on release the performances look ropey (Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich wooden, Matthew Lillard irritating as he chomps every bit of scenery in sight.) The only thing that really stands up is the extraordinary, terrifying, opening sequence.

The Week in Movies

Hi, sorry this is a day late. I spent over four hours non-stop on the Oscar liveblog, and frankly, my brain was mush yesterday, hence the late arrival of this post.

1st - 7th March 2010

A Perfect World (15)
DIR: Clint Eastwood


I’ve always liked Clint Eastwood more as a director than as an actor, and this is a good example of why. He takes a rather cliché story of a con on the run (Kevin Costner) becoming a father figure of sorts to the young boy he takes as a hostage, and manages to give it life with strong cinematography and a near career best performance from an unusually nuanced Costner. There are also good contributions from the supporting cast, notably Laura Dern and a barely recognisable Bradley Whitford, some years before he entered The West Wing. Unfortunately Clint himself growls his way apathetically through the role of the grizzled sheriff (what a stretch) pursuing Costner. A mixed bag then, but worth a look.


Benny’s Video (15)
DIR: Michael Haneke


This is only Haneke’s second feature, but already his trademarks are firmly in place. The film that this one most reminded me of was Hidden; both use similar motifs of long, static shots of video images to unbelievably disturbing effect. The titular Benny (Arno Frisch, subsequently seen in Haneke’s original Funny Games) is a 14 year old middle class kid, whose interest in home movies has been indulged by his parents. He spends much of his time watching violent videos, notably a hideous slaughterhouse film, which he screens over and over. One day, while his parents are away, Benny meets a girl at the video store, brings her home and, while filming, kills her with a bolt gun.

The fact that, up until Benny shows his parents what he has done, the film unfolds almost without dialogue, only adds to the film’s disturbing nature. The violence, as ever with Haneke, isn’t as explicit as you might think it is, but is unbelievably shocking. That’s really down to Haneke’s unwillingness to cut away. We don’t see the murder in any detail, but the static camera allows it to unfold in appalling real time, forcing us to live in the moment. In the third act the film runs a little off the rails, as it begins to move further and further away from Benny’s experience, but it’s worth persevering until the stunningly cold ending. Haneke isn’t for all tastes, and this isn’t his best, but it might prove a good introduction to this challenging filmmaker.


City of Ember (PG)
DIR: Gil Kenan



Monster House director Kenan’s first live action film is a rather familiar dystopian sci-fi but, “y’know, for kids!” Ember is an underground city to which mankind retreated after the surface became uninhabitable. We were only supposed to be there 200 years, but that knowledge, and the key to the way out of Ember has been lost. However, when she finds a mysterious box Lina (Saoirse Ronan), begins to put the clues together and see that there might be a way to leave her crumbling home.

It may not be especially inventive, but at a brisk 90 minutes and with amusing cameos from the likes of Tim Robbins and Bill Murray, Ember moves fast enough that it always remains an enjoyable ride. However, the best reason to see it (as with most of her work) is Saoirse Ronan, who - again - finds a heart and soul in a rather thin character.


Possession [2010]
DIR: Joel Bergvall / Simon Sandquist


Out of morbid curiosity I finally saw this long delayed remake of the brilliant Korean film Addicted. Guess what? It's unspeakably shit. Sarah Michelle Gellar is titanically awful in the role so beautifully played by Lee Mi-yeon in the original; she betrays absolutely no expression, so there's no sense of the emotional upheaval her character is meant to be going through. She's in good company though, as all the performances are dreadful, the direction and screenplay are appallingly cheap and generic and it all adds up to a hideously stupid and dull 85 minutes. Apparently a 30 minute alternate ending on the DVD cleaves closer to the Korean version, improving the film. I don’t care enough to find out whether this is true.


Kindergarten Cop (15)
DIR: Ivan Reitman

Aside from the still underrated Last Action Hero (you heard me), this is the best of Arnie’s comedies. It should be said though that despite the lightness of tone, the title and Ivan Reitman behind the lens, Kindergarten Cop has something of a hard edge to it. In the third act, when the villain of the piece (Richard Tyson, so slimy you suspect he may actually ooze rather than walk) turns up the film takes a pretty violent turn. This means that the film does come off rather confused at the end of the day. That said, the comedy works well enough, the kids are cute and funny and by God, Penelope Ann Miller is adorable (and, while she’s no great shakes as an actress, deserves better projects than the recently completed Robosapien: Rebooted). It’s no classic, but hell, it still makes me laugh.




GI JOE: The Rise of COBRA (12)
DIR: Stephen Sommers


A hugely stupid film, packed with plot holes, rubbish dialogue, ropey CGI, underdeveloped characters and more a setup for a sequel than a film in its own right. And yet... I REALLY enjoyed it, because, and this is the point so many blockbusters miss, it's fun. The performances are a little better than the film deserves (especially Joseph Gordon Levitt's hilariously pantomimic turn) but the main selling point here is simply that Stephen Sommers keeps the entertainment coming at such a pace that you never have time to think about how dumb the film is. I got sucked into the experience, it's no masterpiece, even within its genre, but this is a fun flick, and well worth seeing.


Rocket Science (15)
DIR: Jeffrey Blitz


Mmmmmmmm… Anna Kendrick… Sorry, sorry, I’m supposed to be reviewing Rocket Science in which an awkward kid with a stammer is recruited by the girl he has a crush on (Kendrick… mmmm…) to be on the high school debating team. The first fictional film from Spellbound director Jeffrey Blitz, it hits a lot of the usual high school movie clichés, and in the build up to the final debate championship it starts to feel a little hackneyd, but happily Blitz veers away from the expected resolution and goes for something both more satisfying (in a quiet sort of way) and more true. The performances are all solid, and it’s a shame that we haven’t seen more of Reece Thompson since, but the movie is stolen from under him by the excellent Kendrick. Mmmmmmm… Anna Kendrick.


Witchfinder General (15)
DIR: Michael Reeves


Tragically this brilliant horror film was director Michael Reeves’ last. He died of an accidental drug overdose, aged just 25, shortly after it was released. It’s tragic, because we lost, in Reeves, a genuinely different and interesting voice, one that could easily have been producing distinctive films even now. Though it was made five years earlier, Witchfinder General deserves to stand with The Wicker Man as one of the most haunting British horror films of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Much of that is down to Reeves’ direction, which is shocking, but only occasionally visceral (witness one scene in which a ‘witch’ is burnt by being lowered from a scaffold into a fire) but what is more pertinent to film’s overall effect is Reeves’ direction of his star Vincent Price.

They apparently hated each other, Price exasperated that Reeves was constantly asking him not to act, but it is an indelible performance. All Price’s artifice is stripped away, leaving a cold-hearted bastard whose corruption emanates from every pore, and whose eyes are dead and absolutely chilling. There are some hokey effects and some ropey acting (notably from Hillary Dwyer, cast, surely, more for her pretty face than her talent) but this is a striking film that still shocks and chills.


Grbavica (15)
[Esma’s Secret]
DIR: Jasmila Zbanic

This Bosnian film starts out well, drawing convincing portraits of a Mother (Mirjana Karanovic) working hard to provide for her young daughter (Luna Mijovic) in difficult economic circumstances in a country still scarred by war. Sadly the titular secret is, five minutes in, stark staring obvious, and in the last twenty minutes the film lurches laughably into melodrama, a change which neither the script nor the actors can pull off.

The Week in Movies 5

25 - 31/01/2010

Primal Fear
DIR: Gregory Hoblit


You wouldn’t expect Primal Fear to be any good, it’s a potboiler of a legal thriller, based on a Grishamalike airport paperback and it’s directed by one of Hollywood’s most workmanlike filmmakers. That said, this film is a lot better than it has any right to be. The script is clunky, but it is blessed with an outstanding cast, even in small parts and all of the actors - yes, even Richard Gere - give strong performances. Laura Linney is especially impressive as the brittle prosecutor facing off against Gere’s defence attorney, but it’s another performance that the film is remembered for.

Edward Norton makes his (Oscar nominated) debut as the young man accused of murder, and his performance is absolutely stunning, shifting gears smoothly and with total assurance, but never more so than in the film’s final scene, whose twist dropped my jaw the first time I saw it. Primal Fear isn’t a brilliant film, but it’s well worth seeing for the performances, especially Norton’s.


Spider-Man / Spider-Man 2.1 / Spider-Man 3
DIR: Sam Raimi


The next Spider-Man film will be a reboot, directed by (500) Days of Summer’s Marc Webb, so it seems a good time to look at Sam Raimi’s take on the character with fresh eyes. The first film suffers from all the problems of an origin story; the setup takes up so much of the film that the villain (Willem Dafoe) doesn’t get enough screentime and the second hour of the film feels very rushed. That said, it does capture the feel of the classic Spider-Man stories quite well, with especially winning portrayals of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), Aunt May and Uncle Ben (Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson) and J Jonah Jameson (a priceless JK Simmons, looking like he stepped out of the comic). While some of the CGI now feels a little rubbery Raimi does really capture the fluid and extreme movement that Spidey is capable of, and the action scenes, especially the final face off with the Green Goblin, are surprisingly punchy. On the downside, the script can be rather over earnest, especially in the depiction of Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane and the Green Goblin has one of the worst costumes in superhero movie history, making him look like a cheap Power Ranger. Still, it’s a fine franchise opener on the whole.

Spider-Man 2.1 adds eight minutes to Raimi’s theatrical cut of the sequel, and the additions are largely worthwhile (with the exception of an extra scene with MJ shopping for a wedding dress). In whatever form you see it Spider-Man 2 is one of the great superhero films. It is faster moving, smarter, deeper and more enjoyable than the first film. Much of that is thanks to Alfred Molina’s fantastic performance as Dr. Octopus, who the film makes a much more shaded character than the comics ever did. Raimi seems liberated here too, indulging in a brilliant, Evil Dead like, scene of Ock’s tentacles attacking the doctors who first attempt to remove them from their host’s body. The action is excellent, with improved effects making the fight on the side of an elevated train feel especially exciting and dangerous, and there’s more of a sense of fun to this movie too, with some surprisingly broad comedy on show and a very nice in joke referring to the back injury that nearly forced Maguire’s replacement. MJ is still a drag, and Peter can be a real drip, but for the most part this is, as the title nearly had it, The Amazing Spider-Man

I hated Spider-Man 3 when I first saw it, but looking at it on DVD I’ve warmed to it a little. For about 75 minutes it’s probably the best of the series. It’s got a great villain (Thomas Haden-Church as Sandman), it sets up a rival for the ever more tedious MJ in Bryce Dallas Howard’s Gwen Stacy, it’s very funny, with a brilliant scene for JK Simmons’ Jonah Jameson and it is cleverly written, with the story that’s been brewing between Peter and Harry Osborn since the first film finally coming full circle. There’s a LOT going on here, and then Raimi goes and fucks it up, by adding in the symbiote. The minute Peter puts on the black costume Spider-Man 3 becomes incredibly stupid, with Peter suddenly becoming both an utter tool and taking to dressing like an emo kid some 15 years Maguire’s junior, the sequence of Peter dancing down the street is pure torture. Raimi was forced to include Venom in the film, and it shows.  He clearly has no idea how to handle the character, and crams his entire story into the last 30 minutes of an already packed film. It’s a shame, because there is so much good stuff here (especially the subway fight between Spidey and Sandman), and the film could easily have been the best of the series.


Toy Story 2 [3D]
DIR: John Lassetter / Ash Brannon / Lee Unkrich


Toy Story 2 is probably the greatest sequel ever made. It’s not just a great film in its own right, it manages to follow up a groundbreaking classic and not just match but comprehensively better the first film, but I don’t need to tell you that. Toy Story 2 is a brilliant film however you see it, but this 3D retrofit is yet more proof that 3D adds nothing to movies. It’s technically flawless, but it doesn’t change the experience of the film one iota. The 3D is also very poorly used, nothing really emerges from the screen, which meant that, though I was mostly just swept up in the film, occasionally I was distracted by the fact that despite the 3D effect, the fourth wall seemed as solid as ever. A perfect film then, but in a process that does nothing for it.


The Hitchhiker: Last Scene [short]
DIR: Paul Verhoeven
I’m a big Paul Verhoeven fan, which is just as well because, while it is an interesting curio, this TV epsidode that Verhoeven made just prior to Robocop, as a way of testing the water with an American crew, is absolutely abysmal. Every now and then there is a flash of Verhoeven’s style, but he’s largely buried by an appalling, predictable, script (about a director (Peter Coyote) who’ll go to any lengths to get a performance out of his leading lady) and some monumentally terrible performances (especially, ironically, from his leading lady, who seems to have been cast for her very nice breasts). The best thing about this for fans is that there’s a commentary by Verhoeven, who is as interesting as ever.


Rocketeer
DIR: Joe Johnston

A titanic flop on its 1991 release, this film is probably due a reappraisal (what’s the bet on a 3D remake?), and it certainly deserves better than its current, largely forgotten, status. The 1930’s Hollywood set story of a pilot (Bill Campbell) who finds a jetpack coveted by Errol Flynn style star and Nazi agent Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), may be familiar and predictable, but the telling is fun and the visuals are great. Joe Johnston is a skilled jorneyman filmmaker and the deco look of Rocketeer is a real joy to look at. The performances are broad but, the bland Campbell aside, the cast do decent work, with particularly noteworthy turns from Dalton, clearly having a wonderful time sending up Errol Flynn and Jennifer Connelly, perfectly cast, and never more ravishing, as an aspiring starlet.

The pace slows at times, and the action certainly isn’t up to Raiders of the Lost Ark standards, but this is an enjoyable little romp. I’d actually not mind seeing a remake, or reboot, of this film, because it could have been the start of a rather fun franchise.


MANT!
DIR: Joe Dante
This 16 minute version of Joe Dante’s wonderful, hilarious, send up/homage to 1950’s nuclear para noia sci-fi is only available on the laserdisc version of Matinee (or on youtube). It’s well worth hunting down, because there is a lot more to enjoy here than there was when MANT! Was just the film within the film in Matinee. The whole cast gets the tone absolutely right, never quite winking at the audience. This also goes for Dante, whose obvious affection for these films is palpable through this excellent short.

The Week in Movies 4

Sorry for the lateness of this article, I was busy all yesterday with some housekeeping; going through old review posts and revising the pictures to better fit the current look of the site (click around, have a look, it’s much cooler now).

18 - 24/01/2010

Princess Mononoke
DIR: Hayao Mayazaki


I continue to be disappointed by the much lauded work of Studio Ghibli. Princess Mononoke is a beautiful film, every frame is drawn to perfection, and the fluid animation is light years ahead of most hand drawn work. However, oddly like another film I saw this past week, the visual splendour of Miyazaki's imagery is offset by a story that seems to spend as much time yelling at the audience about looking after the planet as it does telling an actual story. I don’t mind a film having a political point to make, but keep it in the background, tell the story first. As eye candy Princess Mononoke is wonderful, but as a whole I can’t recommend it.


Defamation
DIR: Yoav Shamir


Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir sets out to understand modern anti-semitism, in a rather depressing film. Shamir talks to a lot of people, Jews and gentiles, but never really comes up with any answers. What he does see is a lot of prejudice on both sides. On a trip to Poland with a class of 15 and 16 year old Israeli students he finds that the kids are so ‘prepared’ for anti-semitism that they see it even when it’s not there. This is an intriguing and disturbing thing; the politicisation of fear in teenagers, but Shamir never digs deep into this issue. In the end, Defamation presents a problem, shows us racism on all sides, but never really explores the issue in any great depth.


The Descent
DIR: Neil Marshall


One of the best UK horror films of the past decade. Marshall’s second film (following the silly, but amusing, Dog Soldiers) is a pure tension machine for its first hour. The sequences before the film’s monsters surface are genuinely unnerving. I’ve got two major fears; heights, and tight spaces and so the second act of The Descent played my nerves like guitar strings. The sequence that takes us from a tight collapsing passage in the middle of a cave system to a nail biting attempt to cross a seemingly endless chasm still has me curled up in a ball, biting my nails.

The film takes a shift in its last half hour, becoming a nasty little monster movie. Marshall handles this shift beautifully, as do his all female cast. Everyone acquits themselves well, but special mention must be made of Shauna MacDonald who, in short order, becomes one of horror cinema’s iconic ‘final girls’. The first twenty minutes plod just a little, but otherwise The Descent is a brilliant white knuckle ride, topped off with a visceral, thrilling, third act. Just ignore the sequel.


Happy, Texas
DIR: Mark Illsley
It’s a real shame that this very funny little film isn’t better known. The story has two escaped cons (Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn) holing up in the small town of the title, where they have to pretend to be a gay couple who have come to help put n a beauty pageant for five and six year olds. Zahn gets all the best stuff, as his exceedingly dimwitted character Wayne Wayne Wayne, Jr is left to organise the pageant, while Northam plans the robbery of the local bank.

Northam is a slightly bland lead, but that’s made up for by Zahn’s hilarious performance and by the very funny screenplay (Wayne, to the hot local teacher (Illeana Douglas): “That gay thing is more of a hobby really”) as well as some priceless performances from an eclectic supporting cast. William H. Macy is very funny, and injects a little pathos, as the local sheriff who falls in love with Northam, while Illeana Douglas' quirky charm and individual looks are put to good use. It goes a little wild towards the end, trying to do a bit much with what feels like an obligatory bit of action, but otherwise this is a very funy and much underrated little charmer.


Un Prophete
[A Prophet]
DIR: Jacques Audiard


I wish I’d been able to see A Prophet cold. Without the weight of expectation that has come with the Grand Prix at Cannes, constant whispers about its brilliance and being named Sight and Sound’s best film of 2009 it may well have played better.

This is by no means a bad film. Tahar Rahim makes a barnstorming debut as a young man forced to harden himself and to learn to negotiate the politics of prison in order to survive, and the other performances are also excellent. The problem really is that nothing here feels very new. It’s a pretty standard issue prison movie (it also has shades of now defunct HBO show Oz). It hits the familiar beats of gang loyalties, corrupt guards, prison murders and beating in the showers.

I wasn’t ever bored during A Prophet’s two and a half hour running time, but nor was I ever especially engaged, I knew pretty much where things were going and the film proceeded largely as expected in, sadly, rather unremarkable fashion. If you’re going to see this film, I’d say it’s best to put the glowing reception out of your head, go in without expecting a masterpiece and I think you’ll find a better film.


Slepé Lásky
[Blind Loves]
DIR: Juraj Lehotsky


Blind Loves, which follows four blind people in their respective relationships, bills itself as a documentary, but much of it rings rather false, making me wonder (especially in the sequences dealing with Elena, who is about to have her first child and Zuzana, a teenager looking for love online) how much might have been restaged for the camera.

Besides this problem it’s also just rather dull. I didn’t really learn anything specific about relationships, or how they function differently for the blind. Blind Loves shows, in fact, perhaps its sole really interesting feature is that it shows us thing its subjects will never see, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about these people or their lives.

The Week in Movies 3

11 - 17/01/2010


The Leader, His Driver, and the Driver’s Wife
DIR: Nick Broomfield

The first of a pair of films (the second is His Big White Self) that Nick Broomfield made about Eugène Terre'Blanche, the leader of South Africa’s white supremacist party the AWB. This film is set in the final days of apartheid, and there is a sense of the AWB becoming more radical as the country moves further away from their repugnant position. Broomfield captures much racist ugliness, and the smiling faces behind which it hides. Unfortunately he doesn’t really probe, or ask challenging questions. Much of the film is taken up with repeated attempts to get an interview with Terre'Blanche, and when he finally obtains it Broomfield is five minutes late, which results in much of the interview being Broomfield apologising for his tardiness.

The Leader… is an ugly film about awful people. There are fascinating things here, particularly given the time at which the film was made, but Broomfield never probes deeply enough to get the best out of his subject.


By the People: The Election of Barack Obama
DIR: Amy Rice / Alicia Sams


This documentary gains impressive access to Barack Obama during both the Primary and Presidential campaigns. The primaries take up the great bulk of the running time, and make for a fascinating watch. Rice and Sams focus less on the candidate than they do those surrounding him, capturing everyone from the most lowly staffer (one lovely scene has a nine year old boy making calls on behalf of the campaign) to the campaign managers. The camera zeros in on moments of elation and of near despair, and chronicles the campaign in riveting detail.

There are a couple of issues. The first is the clear partisan nature of the film, there’s nothing negative here at all (which isn’t to say that there aren’t moments the campaign isn’t going brilliantly, just that they are all presented with a partisan gloss). This isn’t to say that the filmmakers should have done a hatchet job on the campaign, but a slightly more questioning nature would be a plus. There is also a tendency for the film to spread itself a little thin, we meet a lot of people, but there isn’t quite enough time to give all of them enough screentime to fully tell their stories (how, for example, does a 9 year old end up manning phones for the Obama campaign?) By the People is surely only the first film to explore the election of America’s first black president, and it’s a good start, but it certainly leaves room for other filmmakers to tell this story in the future.


Kiss of Death [‘95]
DIR: Barbet Schroeder

I haven’t yet seen the original (yes, I know), but I’ve got a soft spot for this remake of the apparently classic noir. David Caruso (best known for taking off and putting on sunglasses in one of the CSI shows) actually gives a decent performance as the ex-con trying to get his family out of the criminal life by turning informant and serving up crime boss Little Junior (Nicolas Cage, bulked up, goateed, and chewing up and spitting out all available scenery in a deliriously nutty turn) for the cops.

Schroeder handles the direction well, keeping things low key visually; a smart choice given that the screenplay and performances (Stanley Tucci’s DA comes to mind) can be rather overblown and in amongst the silliness there are a couple of strong pieces of acting. Kiss of Death is lucky enough to have an on the rise Samuel L Jackson in its cast, and though his role (as a cop injured busting Caruso, and now assigned to him) is thin he makes the best of it. Then there’s Kathryn Erbe, a fine actress who really ought to be much better known than she is. She’s excellent as Caruso’s young wife, again making the best of a nothing of a part.

Kiss of Death is by no means a great film, but it’s an enjoyable, if slightly silly, entertainment, and sometimes that’s all you need.


The Ladykillers [‘55]
DIR: Alexander Mackendrick


Well, it certainly makes the Coen Brothers 2004 remake look even worse than it already did, but for me this Ealing comedy still ranks as a bit of a disappointment.

That’s not to say that it isn’t funny, there are some wonderful scenes of farce as the criminal gang led by Alec Guinness are repeatedly interrupted during their planning by the well meaning little old lady (Katie Johnson) in whose house Guinness is lodging. The scene when the gang first arrive is priceless, as is an extended piece in which the gang has to attempt to recapture one of her pet birds.

The problem is that the film leans rather hard on this one note, and after a while it begins to grow less funny due to overfamiliarity. The performances, especially those of Guinness and Johnson, are excellent, and I laughed a lot in the first half hour or so, and at a scene in which all of Johnson’s friends come for tea, but The Ladykillers isn’t quite the classic I’d been led to expect.


Mystery of the Wax Museum
DIR: Michael Curtiz


This is the first version of a story most famously told in the Vincent Price film House of Wax (itself since remade). Viewed now, Mystery of the Wax Museum clunks horribly in parts (especially the awful scenes with Glenda Farrell as a fast talking reporter), but it’s also extremely entertaining in parts and historically interesting. This is an early colour film, made in the two strip Technicolor process. The colours aren’t always particularly realistic, but that actually aids the film, giving it an eerie air of unreality, and making the ‘wax’ figures work rather well.

Lionel Atwill gives a hugely overblown, but enjoyable, performance as the artist driven mad after his creations are destroyed by an unscrupulous business partner (in an excellent opening scene) while Fay Wray makes for a decent scream queen, and is more radiant than ever thanks to the colour. Perhaps the most famous image in the film, and the creepiest, is seen when Wray accidentally smashes Atwill’s wax face, revealing the scars beneath. It must have been a hell of a shock in 1933, and it still works now. Even at just 74 minutes this film can feel very slow, but it’s fascinating just to look at if you’re interested in film history, and boasts some great sequences.


Batman
DIR: Tim Burton


In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s (outrageously overpraised) take on the character Tim Burton’s Batman films have come in for a lot of stick. Batman is by no means a perfect film, but I’ll take it over Nolan’s films any day. Burton brings the darkness that was an important part of Bob Kane’s Batman, throwing out much of the camp of the TV show in favour of a colour palette dealing mainly in varying shades of black, and an attempt to treat the characters and especially the duality of Batman and Bruce Wayne with a degree of seriousness.

Where he scores over Nolan is that Burton never forgets that he’s making a superhero movie, he never forgets to make the film fun. Jack Nicholson has an absolute ball as The Joker, enjoying the mischief of the character in a hammy, but entertaining, performance. The costumes and props are appropriately outlandish and silly, but the design of the film is brilliant; sleek, gothic and beautiful in all aspects from Gotham itself right down to the Batsuit. Michael Keaton remains, for me, the definitive Batman and Bruce Wayne. He’s sidelined quite a bit, but manages to give both characters some psychological depth and make both sides of this person interesting.

There are problems; the plot is a mess, Batman is sidelined, the suit is clearly constricting, meaning that action scenes can lack a little punch, Prince is brilliant, but his songs are just out of place in this film, and Kim Basinger, though pretty, makes for a wooden love interest. It’s no masterpiece, but Batman is a better film than it’s been credited as lately.


Outrage
DIR: Kirby Dick

Kirby Dick’s (This Film is Not Yet Rated) latest takes to task gay politicians who vote against gay rights legislation, calling them out as hypocrites. That’s fine to a point, but I think how much you end up liking this film will be more about how you feel about its methods than its content.

During the film Dick ‘outs’ several politicians he believes to be gay, some times on quite flimsy evidence. I felt rather uncomfortable with this, because someone’s sexuality is, I feel, their business, and coming out should be a personal decision. The thing is that, politically, I don’t really care whether someone voting to ensure that gay people can’t marry is gay him or herself, because it’s no less wrong if they are straight.

I agree with the thesis of Outrage; gay people in politics should be able to feel comfortable to come out, and they should feel comfortable to vote for gay rights. However, I’m not so on board with the way Dick goes about making this argument, and thus I can’t really recommend the film.


Horsemen
DIR: Jonas Akerlund


Music video director Akerlund’s serial killer thriller starts out stupid, and proceeds downhill from there. A miscast Dennis Quaid plays a homicide detective investigating some grisly murders, which seem to be linked to the passage in Revelation telling of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

The film never establishes any identity for itself whatsoever; instead it is merely a gory riff on The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, with a shade of Saw thrown in, as a way of throwing a bone to the gorehounds in the audience. Horsemen is relentlessly generic, with every scene seeming a shadow of a better one in an infinitely superior movie. Akerlund largely hangs back, seeming disengaged by the material, and the final twist is at once terminally stupid and hugely obvious.

There are two distractions while watching Horsemen. First, wondering how material this bad attracted a cast this good (Quaid, Zhang Ziyi, Lou Taylor Pucci, Patrick Fugit, Peter Stormare, Eric Balfour) and second, Zhang Ziyi, yes she’s a touch old to play 18 and yes, her talent is buried under her halting English, but dear God she’s beautiful, those eyes. Really though, the fact that the best thing about this film is gazing into Zhang Ziyi’s eyes doesn’t speak well of it.


Anne Frank Remembered
DIR: Jon Blair

This very sad, but authoritative, documentary about Anne Frank tells the well known story of her hiding, but where Jon Blair’s film excels is in the telling of what happened afterwards. Anne’s diary ends days before she was taken from her hiding place, ultimately to die in Bergen-Belsen at just 15. What’s so fascinating, and so horrific, about this film is that it provides a series of revelations, showing just how close Anne came to surviving the war (she died of typhus barely a week before Bergen-Belsen was liberated).

The film really hammers home the sense that you get from her diary, the here we lost a remarkable young woman who would have given much to the world. Like all documentaries about the holocaust, Anne Frank Remembered lives in the shadow of the monumental Shoah, but this is likely to remain the definitive film telling of this one very sad story.


Batman Returns
DIR: Tim Burton


Tim Burton’s Batman sequel is a great example of what happens when a filmmaker with a particular vision is allowed to do pretty much what he likes, on a grand scale. It’s a little messy, a little unfocused at times, but Batman Returns makes up in verve and in fun what it lacks in polish. For me the problem is that the story tips the balance towards Danny DeVito’s Penguin, rather than Michelle Pfeiffer’s more complex, more interesting and considerably better acted (and, let’s be fair now, sexier) Catwoman.

The look of the film is darker, and even more demented, than that of Batman and the blackly comic tone adopted by Burton is highly entertaining (as is Christopher Walken’s typically off the wall performance as Max Shreck; a sort of evil Bruce Wayne. Daniel Waters’ screenplay cleverly puts Catwoman and Batman together; two people who are going through many of the same things, but have ended up at cross purposes. It’s an interesting relationship, well played by both Pfeiffer and Keaton, and I wish they’d been allowed to explore it a little further.

There are moments (mostly with Penguin) that are just a little too silly, and the film is overcrowded with characters, but Batman Returns is a great entertainment, and a pretty smart one into the bargain.

The Week in Movies 2

04 - 10/01/2010

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Dir: Carl Reiner

Once upon a time, Steve Martin was funny. No, really. I wonder sometimes if it was just a dream, but he really was hilariously funny once. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (what a great title, by the way) is a brilliant noir spoof that, pre- CGI, has Martin playing against clips from classics of the genre, allowing him to interact with Humprey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, Veronica Lake, Lana Turner and many more. The plot is gloriously silly, but appropriately twisty, with a McGuffin (the Carlotta lists) that could easily have worked in a straight noir, but it’s the parodic dialogue that is most fun. Martin’s narration is a constant joy, with lines like: “I hadn't seen a body put together like that since I solved the case of the Murdered Girl with the Big Tits." and “Carlotta was the kind of town where they spell trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you try to correct them, they kill you."

Carl Reiner’s direction is clever; he and cinematographer Michael Chapman ape the noir style beautifully, and manage to integrate Martin into the clips brilliantly (remember this is long before the CGI tricks of Forrest Gump). Te performances are also great, with Martin brilliantly straight-faced amid the silliness and a wonderfully game Rachel Ward, perfectly cast as the femme fatale (she’d have fit right in with Gardner or Lake in the 40’s). This is perhaps a film most rewarding for film buffs, but even if you haven’t seen the movies it uses clips from, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is still an hilarious comedy.


A Kiss Before Dying [‘56]
Dir: Gerd Oswald

Noir just seems a bit odd in colour, particularly the pastel shades and bright sunshine that much of this Ira Levin adaptation takes place in. The idea is pretty good; when Bud Corliss (Robert Wagner) discovers that this girlfriend Dorothy (Joanne Woodward), who he has been wooing purely for her father’s fortune is pregnant, and likely to be disinherited, he kills her. The death is ruled a suicide, but Dorothy’s sister Ellen (Virginia Leith) begins to suspect foul play, and the evidence starts to point to her new boyfriend; Bud Corliss.

The problem with A Kiss Before Dying is that, after an excellent, exceedingly creepy, first half hour, the film downshifts a gear. The acting isn’t great, with Robert Wagner especially wooden, and the beautiful Leith matching his style, the storytelling is predictable, making the film feel long. The look of the film just doesn’t work, it feels as though it is at cross purposes with the noirish feel of the story. A disappointment.


Overnight
Dir: Tony Montana / Mark Brian Smith
Reviewed in my Top 5 Making of documentaries


Ball of Fire
Dir: Howard Hawks


I’m loath to employ such a huge cliché, but they really don’t make ‘em like this any more. That’s largely because the screwball comedy is an all but dead genre. This wonderful example, by the versatile director Hoawrd Hawks (who also made the greatest of all screwball comedies with Bringing Up Baby), has Barbara Stanwyck as a showgirl who has to hide from the Police. Fortunately she’s been invited to be part of English professor Gary Cooper’s study of slang. Stanwyck ends up staying with a whole group of professors; a cat set among the pigeons. The stuffy Cooper, of course, falls in love with her, much to the chagrin of her mobbed up fiancé Dana Andrews.

Reviewing comedy is hard, there’s little middle ground; it’s either funny or it isn’t, well, Ball of Fire is, minute for minute, one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen. Stanwyck and Cooper clearly like one another (they also made Meet John Doe together in 1941), they spark wonderfully off one another, delivering their rapid fire dialogue crisply, every punchline (which sometimes seems like every second line) hits the bullseye, and their romantic chemistry is fantastic too. Of course, Cooper would have had be a eunuch to fail to have chemistry with Stanwyck, who has never been sexier than in this film.

The other seven professors are based on Disney’s seven dwarves. It’s not all that obvious in the film, but sreenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brakett give all of them a lot of very funny business, ensuring that no scene passes by without at least one belly laugh. The look of the film is functional rather than spectacular, but Hawks carries off the mayhem beautifully and Gregg Toland never shot an ugly film. Also worth mentioning is the costuming, largely for Stanwyck’s dazzling appearance in a hays office baiting Edith Head creation in her opening scenes.

Unusually for a romantic comedy, Ball of Fire is both romantic and fall on the floor funny, the fact that it isn’t on UK DVD is a terrible crime.


Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dir: Steven Spielberg


Perhaps the most disappointing cinematic experience of my life. The third Indiana Jones film turned the eight year old me into the guy who is writing this, sadly I can’t for a second imagine the messy fourth film doing the same for kids who were 8 in 2008..

All my problems with the film were magnified on DVD; the bad special effects, the awful screenplay, the legions of pointless characters (does ANONE know what John Hurt is doing here, or what side Ray Winstone’s character was actually on in the end?), the weak villain, Shia, Shia and those fucking CGI monkeys, ALIENS, THE FRIDGE, THE CGI GOPHER.

There are a couple of saving graces though, and they just about pull the film through. Even though he sounds terribly, terribly bored, Harrison Ford is still Indiana Jones through and through, and seeing him in that hat for the first time in 18 years (and Spielberg’s iconic introduction for him) is a moment of childlike glee. Even better than that though, Karen Allen, brining back Marion Ravenwood for a wonderful encore. She’s as beautiful and spunky at 57 as she was at 29 and she and Ford play off each other with such obvious enthusiasm, it’s the scenes between them that really recapture the fun of the franchise, as Indy says when Marion asks if there have been other women “There were a few, but they all had the same problem… They weren't you, honey.”

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a pretty terrible whole, with a few sparklingly brilliant bits, and that’s not good enough for this franchise.


Targets
Dir: Peter Bogdanovich


He may have made enough crap to fill the sewer system of a major city, but Roger Corman also gave a lot of great filmmakers their first jobs and their first breaks. We have him to thank for the likes of Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppla, Martin Scorsese and, in this case, Peter Bogdanovich. Boris Karloff owed Corman two days work, so Bogdanovich got to make any film he wanted, providing he used Karloff and came in under budget.

What Bogdanovich came up with is a simple, but disturbing, thriller whose two disparate plots - one following an aging horror film star (Karloff) announcing his retirement, the other following a young man whose obsession with guns sees him become a murderous sniper - crash together in a strong set piece. Despite Karloff’s fine, and rather poignant, performance, the first hour of the film is a little slow and meandering, but it really picks up with an ultra disturbing silent sequence in which the sniper (Tim O’Kelly) hides in a power station and picks off victims as they drive by. It’s an even freakier sequence post Washington sniper.

Bogdanovich’s next would be an honest to god masterpiece; The Last Picture Show, but on a tight schedule, with a lot of limitations, this is a strong debut from a director who seldom gets his due.


A Night at the Opera
Dir: Sam Wood


It contains some brilliant set pieces, but this Marx Brothers comedy has some of the momentum sucked out of it thanks to a dull B-story, wet performances from the romantic leads, and several too many musical interludes.

That said, when it’s funny, when Groucho is on, when Harpo is causing havoc, it’s painfully funny. The contract scene is justly famous, especially Chico’s capper “there ain’t no sanity clause” and the physical dexterity on display in the scenes in Groucho’s very small cabin on a transatlantic ship, and Harpo’s destruction of the final operatic performance are as dextrous as they are funny, it’s just a shame that between times the film has to tread water for so long.


La Belle et La Bete
[Beauty and the Beast]
Dir: Jean Cocteau

I’m going to get mail about this one. I was impressed with Jean Cocteau’s beloved version of Beauty and the Beast at an aesthetic level, it is a ravishingly beautiful film, and it really does look like the illustrations from a book of fairy tales brought to dazzling life in crisp black and white. The problem was that I was left unmoved by it.

My main difficulty was with Jean Marais’ performance as the Beast. I understand that there was a different style of screen acting when this film was made, but even making allowances for that, and for the inexpressive make up through which he has to act, Marais’ performance contains more ham than the average delicatessen. It’s a huge thing, with gestures straight out of silent film and vocalisation as if to the back of an endless theatre. I found it rather comical.

The other problem was that I just couldn’t get Disney’s peerless version out of my head, it’s just as beautiful a film as this one, but infinitely more affecting for me, and better acted.


Night at the Museum 2
Dir: Shawn Levy


I love Amy Adams. I saw her first in Drop Dead Gorgeous, but when I saw her in Junebug, like so many others, I was smitten. She’s beautiful, certainly, but it’s not that, it’s the sheer charisma that she seems to exude on screen. It’s the way that she always seems to be able to be bright and cheerful, as if nothing bad could ever happen around her. It’s the way she, like so many of the truly great movie stars, simply seems lit from within. There’s not a movie she can’t save (well, bar Cruel Intentions 2, even Amy Adams making out with a girl couldn’t help that). She’s the only reason I saw this movie, and it took me a little bit by surprise.

Not only was I head over heels for Adams' spunky, adventure seeking, Amelia Earhart (now there, finally, is a reason to get over my paralysing fear of heights) but I actually had rather a good time with the film. It’s by no means brilliant, but there are a few good laughs, some neat comic turns (notably Hank Azaria’s) and it’s all very efficiently done and completely inoffensive, altogether, perfectly acceptable family fare.


Russell Howard - Live: Dingledodies
Fellow Mock the Week panellist Frankie Boyle is perhaps the funniest man in Britain right now, but the young, energetic, relentlessly positive Howard runs him a close second. This live DVD, however, is a lot better than Boyle’s, because this material is almost all new. There are a few things that were used on Mock the Week, but for the most part this is original, hysterical material from a great comic. Well worth checking out.


The Killers [‘46]
Dir: Robert Siodmak
And once again, I suspect there may be mail, as I sharpen a knife and place it to the throat of this sacred cow. It’s not that The Killers is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t live up to either its reputation or its tremendous opening scene, after the menacing first appearance of the killers, and the murder of Swede Andreson (Burt Lancaster) the rest of the story sees an insurance invetigator trying to uncover the story behind Swede’s murder, and thus recover money from a six year old robbery. The structure is rather like Citizen Kane, each witness triggering a flashback.

The problem is that for all the film’s incredible style, for all the fine performances and for all Ava Gardner’s jaw dropping beauty, it doesn’t amount to much more than a rather predictable mystery for me. I knew where this movie was going early on, and it never took me by surprise thereafter. Siodmak certainly produced a film that defines noir visually, but there are far more satisfying examples out there.